No Straw MenEnlightened discourse proscribes arguments that are weak or imaginary, like straw, set up only to be confuted summarily.

The Duties of Educated Young People

Submitted for the Hamilton College Pruyn Essay Prize.

The duties of educated young people are nothing short of shaping the future. Indeed, the influence one person can command is extraordinary.

Of course, to direct the course of human events, it helps first to direct oneself. I propose a two-part method. First, identify and integrate your convictions. This way, you transcend hesitating, noncommittal language, and achieve clarity of purpose and strength of mind. Second, make your convictions concrete, specific, and definite. This way, you can communicate them to others with ease. Take as your guide the principle to say what you mean, and to mean what you say.

But you need not launch into debates. Do not force arguments on those uninterested or unwilling. It is not your job to save everyone’s soul.

It behooves you, however, never to keep silent when silence implies your sanction. This is one of the tragic lessons of the 20th century: evil flourishes by the moral agnosticism of good people, because the good is not self-sustaining, but needs eternal vigilance. Make yourself heard on those issues that personally matter most. Opportunities abound; you can e-mail newspapers and magazines, TV and radio commentators, and your political representatives.

For the orally inclined, try the following. On any given day, note how many times people articulate ideas as if they were indisputable. Why not then challenge such comments—again, not to give a lengthy speech, but merely to register disagreement? Eureka moments are rare, since changing our beliefs is a process. Yet it is of such informed activism that public opinion is ultimately molded.

To be sure, events greatly affect history; but it is a relative handful of humans with concrete convictions and the drive to pursue them who gives the world shape and purpose. As the anthropologist Margaret Mead reportedly said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that has.”

Perhaps the most famous example is that anonymous Chinese bystander, who in 1989 posted himself before and blocked a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square. In a moment, this otherwise unexceptional student may have impressed his image on the global memory more vividly, more intimately than even May Zedong did. Then there’s Rosa Parks, whose mere refusal, in 1955, to change seats on a bus dramatically humanized the struggle to end Jim Crow. More recently, we can point to Tim Berners-Lee. Don’t recognize the name? Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web.

Yet such obscurity only reinforces the point: to shape the future, you don’t need money, you don’t need looks, you don’t need fame. What you need is an opportunity. And no combination to create opportunity is more potent than an educated mind atop the vigor of youth.

Some might argue that these notions are simplistic or fanciful. To the contrary, as Thomas Edison of all people understood, genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. So few people attend town-hall meetings, observes the filmmaker Michael Moore, that if you go with a group you can virtually institute your agenda. And in a country where only half of eligible voters exercise that sacred right, it’s increasingly evident: decisions are made by those who show up and those who speak up. In such a milieu, we educated young people should guide those decisions—not as philosopher-kings who brainwash or dictate, but to ensure that the flame that is the human mind burns bright always.